Sins of Innocence

Excerpt

Sins of Innocence Excerpt
(c) 2026 Lucy Monroe
All Rights Reserved

Chapter 1: Cinderella and the Society Dame

WRAITH

Kenneth Shaughnessy’s house in Queens isn’t anything like Brogan Shaughnessy’s Long Island mansion, but it’s in a neighborhood reserved for rich people.

Red brick with a well maintained, if small front yard, there’s parking for two cars in the driveway. One spot is taken with a Mercedes.

I take the other, backing in because I don’t leave things like ease of exit to chance.

A quick assessment of the property doesn’t reveal any security personnel. So, not that rich. Or maybe just too arrogant to think he needs on site security for his home.

Yeah, I’m going with that one. Kenneth Shaughnessy is an arrogant son of a bitch with a fully developed sense of entitlement.

Climbing the stone steps to the porch, I ring the doorbell. And wait. I’m about to ring it again when it swings open, revealing a breathless woman dressed in a conservative maid’s uniform that hides most of her skin, but not her curves.

“Can I…” She pauses, sucks in a steadying breath and pretty bow lips twist in a grimace before she continues. “May I help you?”

Someone is a stickler for proper grammar and I doubt it’s the pretty little thing in front of me.

My ma used to correct me about asking may I instead of can I. When I asked her why it mattered if she knew what I meant, she said it was the way rich people did it and if ever wanted to be one of them, I had to learn how to talk like they did.

I didn’t want to be rich if it meant being mean like her employers and said so.

She shook her head at me and said, “The people with the money have the power. If you want to be free, you have to be rich.”

She was wrong about the freedom thing. I got that when I left my stepfather’s house and entered the Army. She was also wrong about the rich people thing. Her husband was a very rich man when he died and he’d never once spoken like a rich person. Lleshi was one-hundred percent Albanian gangster with a dose of post prison swagger and cruelty.

I was wrong about the rich people thing too though. My boss is a fucking billionaire and he can be a mean son of a bitch, but he doesn’t play petty power games to prove his superiority.

That grimace shows this woman is used to being corrected by someone who does.

Her golden brown hair is pulled back in some kind of braid that starts flat at the top of her head, which I can see because she’s so damn short. I’m a above average height at 6’3″, but she’s at least ten inches – if not a foot – shorter than me.

Blue eyes with a thin circle of brown around the pupils show polite inquiry until she takes me in and then they flare with something else. Sexual appreciation.

I’ve only known one other person with heterochromatic blue eyes and the only thing they ever reflected was the stone-cold apathy of a killer.

Hers are way more expressive as sexual appreciation turns to confusion and then to fear.

The confusion makes sense. She doesn’t know who I am, or why I’m here. I’m used to the flash of fear;, but I liked the sexual appreciation more.

And damned if it isn’t mutual.

I may not be able to see any cleavage, but her tits are big enough, even her boxy shirt can’t disguise them. Her waist dips in before flaring out to ample hips my fingers want to dig into while I’m deep inside her pussy.

Fuck! What the hell am I thinking?

She’s got kids. That means she’s married. Only she’s not wearing a ring. She’s not wearing any other jewelry either, which could mean her employer requires her to leave her ring off while working.

Rich people can have some weird-assed ideas. I should know. I am one. Now.

“Are you Mrs. Gallagher?” I ask.

The fear intensifies before she can mask it. “Yes.”

“I am Kieran Lleshi. I work for Mick Fitzgerald. You need to come with me.” It’s more words than I usually say, but she’s not a soldier, so she needs an explanation.

That fear? Blossoms into outright terror, her pupils dilating, nearly swallowing up the thin brown circle in the center of the blue. “What? Why?”

I’m used to people being nervous around me. I’m a big man, shoulders broad enough that sometimes I have to shift sideways to get through a narrow door. And I don’t smile because I prefer intimidation over charm to gain cooperation.

I don’t want to scare the sweet little thing in front of me though.

“Your daughter is waiting for you.” That should calm her down.

It doesn’t. Her eyes flare wide in horror. “My daughter? The underboss has my daughter?”

She knows Mick is the underboss? That means she’s aware her employer is mobbed up. Is her husband? Is that why she knows about Mick’s true role?

Most people think he’s Brogan Shaughnessy’s right hand man in a legitimate business empire. He even has a title: chief operations officer.

“There was an issue at school—” I start to say when strident tones from inside the house interrupt me.

“Áine! Don’t stand there with the door open! You’re letting all the cold air out.”

Áine. I like that name because it reminds me of the Irish grandmother who died when I was ten. She pronounced her name as awn-ya too.

Mick Shaughnessy guessed I had Irish blood from the very beginning. He was right. I’m a quarter Irish, a quarter Albanian and half Italian. Because my sperm donor was not the man my mother married. He was the Italian piece of shit who took advantage of a vulnerable woman working in his home.

The boss attributes my superior fighting skills and strength of will to my Irish roots though.

Their real origin is a lot more practical. If I hadn’t learned to fight, and stubbornly stood my ground, I wouldn’t have survived my childhood. The Army took my street fighting techniques and honed them, molding me into the perfect weapon when I became a Ranger.

“Is she alright? What does Mr. Fitzgerald have to do with it?” Áine asks in panicked tones as if her employer hadn’t spoken. “Why didn’t the school call me if one of my children is ill? Why—”

“Áine!” This time the woman’s voice cracks like a whip.

Jumping, Áine shoots a worried look over her shoulder and steps back. “Come in.”

I do, feeling the immediate drop in temperature from outside. The central air is working just fine in this place and set to winter level chill.

Áine quickly edges around me to close the door. “I’ll tell Mrs. Shaughnessy what’s going on and get my bag.”

Relieved she’s finally going to cooperate, I incline my head in acknowledgement of her words. I should have led with the news her daughter needed her, but I’m used to people following my boss’s orders without a need for explanation.

Whether they are in the mob, or not, people want to keep Mick Fitzgerald happy.

Áine hurries into a room off the entryway. “Mrs. Shaughnessy, I have to go. One of the girls needs me.”

She has more than one daughter?

Mysterious anger lights a fire in my gut at the knowledge she has carried not one daughter, but multiple children of another man.

She’s married. She’s not mine.

But the primitive warrior inside me that I got to know so well in the Army and accept as my core nature now rejects that truth with deadly intent.

A man worthy of calling himself her husband wouldn’t leave her working for an asshole like Kenneth Shaughnessy.

“Nonsense. If one of the children isn’t feeling well and must be picked up from school, your mother can retrieve her and take her home. You still have far too much to do to prepare for my dinner party tonight to take the time to leave and come back.”

“I’m sorry, but I have to go.” Áine’s tone is respectful, but determined.

“No. It’s impossible, but you may take a minute to call your mother to fetch her,” Allison Shaugnessy (Because who else would it be?) concedes grudgingly. “Why the school didn’t simply call her to begin with, I cannot guess. You have instructed them to do so during your working hours, haven’t you?”

“Yes, but this—”

“You will have to remind them. However, that must wait. You need to get back to work.”

Done with this useless back-and-forth, I enter the living room. “Mrs. Shaughnessy, I have orders to bring Áine to the estate.”

I don’t call Áine Mrs. Gallagher this time. For some reason the last name sticks in my craw.

“What estate? Who are you?” Allison asks imperiously.

“The Shaughnessy Estate,” I reply to the first question and then add my answer to the second. “Kieran Lleshi.”

I’ve seen Allison Shaughnessy several times over the six years since I joined the mob, but I’m not surprised she hasn’t noticed me. She’s one of those society dames who does not deign to notice anyone she believes to be below her on the social strata.

And a mere foot soldier definitely falls in that category for her. I may be one of Brice’s captains now with my own crew and have more than enough money to buy a house just like this one and staff it with damn security, but I don’t move in Allison Shaughnessy’s circles.

By my choice.

“You told me you had to pick your daughter up from school! Why on earth would Brogan want you brought to the estate?” Allison demands of Áine.

“My daughter is there and I told you she needed me.”

“What? Which daughter?” Allison asks shrilly.

“Sadie,” I supply.

Both Allison and Áine look at me with varying degrees of shock and worry.

“Does this have something to do with the contretemps at Kenny Jr.’s school? Are you saying Sadie had something to do with Fitzgerald attacking my son? That little psychopath sent my son to the hospital, did you know that?”

It was urgent care, not the hospital, but the better question is: if she is so concerned, why is the boy’s mother here instead of being with her son?

I don’t ask. Neither do I answer her questions.

“Get your purse Áine.”

Áine nods and rushes from the room.

“What? No! If you leave, I will dock your wages!” Allison threatens.

Is this what my mother had to endure when she worked as a maid for the capo who raped her and his snobbish family? The thought sickens me.

After I was born, ma helped with her parents’ bodega and cleaned a realtor’s offices at night. I spent a lot of time with my Irish gran and Albanian babagjysh in their bodega and their apartment above it. We all lived with gran and babagjysh until my stepfather got out of prison when I was eight.

Then ma moved in with him and didn’t work as a maid anymore. He forced her into an entirely different type of employment.

But I didn’t find that out until a lot later.

At first, she visited me at her parents’ every afternoon. She was there when I got home from school and didn’t leave until we’d shared an early dinner. I didn’t see her on the weekends.

I didn’t know that was her busiest time. All I knew was that I missed her, but when I begged to come live with her, she always said no.

There’d always been an underlying sadness in my mom, but after a few months, she started spacing out during her visits. Sometimes, she forgot what day it was and missed visiting entirely. She was always sorry after, but it happened more and more.

Gran took her to task for it, saying maybe ma should get more sleep.

The next time she came, ma was filled with erratic energy.

I was only ten by then, but gran and babagjysh didn’t have to whisper about drugs and Lleshi’s bad influence for me to guess what was going on. Kids at school talked and some of them even used drugs they snuck from their parents.

Babagjysh went to confront Lleshi about my mom’s health and came home with a haunted look in his eyes. He and gran talked in hushed tones filled with distress that night. Babagjysh used an Albanian word I’d never heard before: kurvë.

I asked him what it meant the next day and he told me in a harsher tone than I’d ever heard from him that I didn’t need to know and never to repeat it.

For the next few days my grandparents barely talked, but gran cried at night when she thought I was asleep. The bodega was closed on Sundays and the next one, Babagjysh said he was going to bring his zemra e vogël home.

Gran paced the floor the entire time he was gone, her fear and worry written all over her usually smiling features.

He returned bruised and limping without his little heart. I heard gran sobbing behind their door that night. A week later babagjysh was shot during a robbery at the bodega while gran and I were upstairs.

Gran sold the store and apartment before moving us from the Bronx to Queens. I didn’t see ma as often, but she said it was better that way.

Gran hardly ever smiled after babagjysh’s death and she lost all the soft roundness I associated with her. We’d only been living in Queens for eight months when she had her first heart attack.

She passed a year later.

Once gran died, I had no choice but to move in with ma and Lleshi. It was then that I learned why ma’d never wanted me to come live with her, why she used drugs, and what she’d become.

A kurvë, a whore for the Albanian Boys.

She tried to be a good mom, but she couldn’t protect me from Lleshi’s beatings anymore than she could go a few hours without taking something to get her through the day.

“You need to leave,” Allison says, breaking into my thoughts, turning her demanding ire on me. “I don’t know what Áine is thinking, but she’s not going with you.”

I return to the entryway to wait for Áine without replying to the unpleasant woman.

She follows. “I’ll tell Áine you went. I’m sure Brogan can have one of his men take Sadie home. I really don’t understand what she’s doing there. Fitzgerald should be making friends with children like my son. Instead, he got in a fight with him because of that awful girl.”

I doubt Fitz likes Kenny Jr. any more than Mick likes Kenneth Sr. And that’s not about to change.

The only reason I was with Mick at the school is that he was giving me instructions on investigating Kenneth Shaughnessy when he got the text. In too much of a hurry to call on a security detail, he ordered me to accompany him.

Mick Fitzgerald can take care of himself, but when it comes to his family, he never leaves anything to chance and always has extra security when he is with them.

He thinks Brogan’s cousin, who is also one of his lieutenants, is trying to stir up trouble about Mick becoming the next boss. From what Mick told me about what Kenny Jr. has been saying to Fitz, I have to agree. The underboss wants to know how widespread the discontent has spread and who agrees with Kenneth.

I don’t like the chances of any of the soldiers who have shown disloyalty toward their next boss by voicing such an opinion.

The Shaughnessy Mob is not a democracy. The boss isn’t chosen by the rank and file. He’s chosen by his predecessor and Mick is Brogan’s choice. The details of the marriage contract between Mick and Kara are pretty well known among the mob.

In exchange for giving his first son the Shaughnessy surname, Mick will be named boss upon Brogan’s death or retirement. But that’s not going to happen anytime soon. Brogan is only fifty-eight.

So, why the hell is Kenneth starting this shit now?

He has to know that Mick would find out about it, and my boss is not known for extending mercy to traitors. He’s not driven by emotion, but a sense of honor that is very binary. If his men are loyal, they receive his loyalty. If they betray him, they receive death.

He hasn’t had to make an example of anyone in the past six years, but I’ve heard enough about what he did to the last soldiers who were rats to think Kenneth Shaughnessy would be smart enough not to put himself in the same category.

Maybe he thinks talking shit about Mick and sowing discontent in the ranks isn’t disloyal.

Mick doesn’t agree.

Neither do I. When I made my vow to the mob, I meant it.

Or maybe Kenneth believes his last name being Shaughnessy will protect him from Mick’s wrath? He’s wrong about that too.

“Why are you just standing there? I told you to leave,” Allison’s still strident tones break into my reverie, but I continue to ignore her.

The sound of approaching footsteps brings my head up though. Áine is hitching a tote over one shoulder. “I’m ready.”

“You are not leaving,” Allison screeches. “If you walk out that door, you’re fired. And don’t expect a reference.”

Áine pales, but she doesn’t stop.

Allison leaps toward her, hands outstretched like claws, clearly intent on trying to physically force Áine to stay.

I don’t hesitate. With a quick move, I interrupt the older woman’s momentum and deposit her on her ass on the shiny parquet floor. But I’m careful not to jar her too badly.

She might be a selfish shrew, but she’s still a woman.

And a shrieking one when Áine and I step out into a sudden summer shower.

Well, shit.

I shrug out of my suit jacket fast and hold it over Áine’s head to stop the rain from soaking her while I guide her to my SUV.

SUV.